Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly called Prince Andrew “an idiot” behind his back, according to a bombshell new book by Tina Brown.
Brown — a high-powered journalist who previously edited Vanity Fair, The New Yorker and the Daily Beast — details the transactional friendship between the pedophile and the prince in her tome, “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor – the Truth and the Turmoil,” set for release later this month.
“Privately, Epstein told people that Andrew was an idiot, but — to him — a useful one,” Brown writes in the book, excerpted in the Telegraph this weekend.
“A senior royal, even if tainted, is always a potent magnet abroad,” Brown continues. “Epstein confided to a friend that he used to fly the Duke of York to obscure foreign markets, where governments were obliged to receive him, and Epstein went along as HRH’s investment adviser. With Andrew as frontman, Epstein could negotiate deals with these (often) shady players.”
Epstein died behind bars in 2019 while awaiting trial on child sex-trafficking charges.
Andrew — who was famously photographed by The Post strolling with the pedophile in 2011 following Epstein’s first release from prison — has denied knowing anything about Epstein’s illegal behavior.
Back in January, Queen Elizabeth stripped the prince of his military and royal titles after a Manhattan judge allowed a sexual assault lawsuit against the disgraced royal to move forward.
The suit was filed by Virginia Roberts Giuffre, 38, who has long claimed that Epstein made her have “disgusting” sex with the royal three times, starting in 2001 when she was just 17.
Andrew’s lawyers say he “unequivocally denies Giuffre’s false allegations against him.” He has never been charged criminally.
In her new book, Brown additionally writes: “Epstein made Andrew feel he had joined the big time — the deals, the girls, the plane, the glittering New York world, where he wasn’t seen as a full-grown man still dependent on his mother’s Privy Purse strings or on the harsh pecking order of the Palace. The Duke was always as oversexed as a boob-ogling adolescent.”
The journalist further describes the royal in unflattering terms, writing: “Andrew, unfortunately, exhibited classic symptoms of what is scientifically recognized as the Dunning-Kruger effect, the cognitive bias in which people come to believe that they are smarter and more capable than they really are.”
Brown adds that Andrew had a combination of “overweening self-confidence and unchallenged ignorance.”
She claims that Epstein “deftly exploited” Andrew’s “sense of grievance.”
Meanwhile, Brown details how disgraced “madam” Ghislaine Maxwell — a longtime confidant of Epstein’s who was recently convicted of sex trafficking — initially helped connect Epstein and Andrew.
“Prince Andrew was Ghislaine’s biggest social catch to present to Epstein,” Brown writes. “He was easy to entertain and satiate. Andrew, Epstein and Ghislaine became a peripatetic social trio — the Three Musketeers of Lust — showing up together at Ascot, joining a shoot at Sandringham, and stepping out at the Queen’s Dance of the Decades at Windsor Castle in June 2000.”
The highly anticipated book is set to cause a stir upon its release on April 26.
Brown previously penned the 2007 biography “The Diana Chronicles,” about Andrew’s late sister-in-law, Princess Diana. That book became a worldwide sensation, selling millions of copies.
